Sleeping on Jupiter

Jarmuli: a city of temples, a centre of healing on the edge of the ocean. Nomi, a young girl, is taken from her family and finds herself in an ashram, overseen by a charismatic guru. But Guruji's charm...Read more

Jarmuli: a city of temples, a centre of healing on the edge of the ocean. Nomi, a young girl, is taken from her family and finds herself in an ashram, overseen by a charismatic guru. But Guruji's charm masks a predatory menace, and the young girl faces danger beyond her understanding. Twenty years later, Nomi returns to Jarmuli with a documentary film crew. All has changed in a town that she no longer knows, as tourists and market traders bustle, banter and chase their dreams amidst the temples of her youth. Seeking the truth about what happened to her and her family, Nomi finds herself chasing shadows in a town that has reinvented itself. But when she returns to the ashram that haunts her dreams, she discovers some scars cannot be washed away.Read less

About the author: Anuradha Roy

Anuradha Roy has worked as a publisher and journalist and is now editor at Permanent Black, an independent press in New Delhi. She was the winner of the Picador-Outlook... Read more

Anuradha Roy has worked as a publisher and journalist and is now editor at Permanent Black, an independent press in New Delhi. She was the winner of the Picador-Outlook Non-fiction Prize in 2004, and her first novel An Atlas of Impossible Longing (2008) has been translated into thirteen languages.Read less

Review:

The themes of innocence stolen, the refuge of the imagination, and the inclination to look away are handled with sensitivity and subtlety in some of the best prose of recent years encountered by...Read more

The themes of innocence stolen, the refuge of the imagination, and the inclination to look away are handled with sensitivity and subtlety in some of the best prose of recent years encountered by this reader. Roy brings a painterly eye, her choice of detail bringing scenes to sensual life, while eschewing floridness: a masterclass rather in the art of restraint, the pared-back style enabling violence close to the surface to glint of its own accord ... An important contribution to an essential debate, Anuradha Roy's poetic work of luminous prose deserves a wide readership in India and beyond. -- Rebecca K Morrison Independent. Roy has used the most potent weapon in a writer's arsenal - the form of the novel, with its ability to simultaneously be universal and particular - to boldly unmask the hidden face of Indian spirituality and the rampant sexual abuse in its unholy confines. -- Meena Kandasamy Guardian. There's been a recent call to action against sexual assault in India as rape cases have begun to make international headlines rather than just being accepted as part of everyday female experience in the country. In focusing on this perpetration of violence against women and children, Roy's book is both incredibly timely and extremely brave. -- Lucy Scholes The National.Read less